Where is the business case for HSPA or LTE ?

TeliaSonera on Monday launched the world’s first commercial LTE networks, capable of delivering up to 100-Mbps connection speeds.”

Just last month the GSA have suggested HSPA+ supporting a peak DL of 21 Mbps will become the benchmark for most operators prior to launching LTE.

I am still looking for the person who has achieved achieve 7.2Mbps, or anything like it on any commercial network.

To quote Alan Hadden of the GSA, “I recall when Telstra launched 21 Mbps – first in the world, in February 2009, they set customer expectations from the outset – quoting from their website: Customers will experience typical user download speeds of 550kbps to 8Mbps in all capitals, metropolitan and selected regional areas.”

But 550Kbps is a far cry from the headline 21 Mbps !

The GSA may say that users should not expect this speed, but that is what the operators “sell”, and that is the problem. If an operator wants to sell 7.2 Mpbs, or any other speed, then they should be able to support that speed.

The trouble is 3G networks (and LTE will be no different) are not engineered to support these speeds and will not be engineered to support 21Mbps let alone 100Mbps. Operators never had the traffic engineering or RF engineering skills to build and operate UMTS networks, let alone HSPA or LTE.

Further more, operators do not have a viable business models for 2G / 3G let alone business models to support the huge increase in data volumes they will need to support for LTE traffic, without consolidation and mergers.

Network architectures are completely wrong to support the data speeds and volumes demanded by subscribers and operators cannot be justify in a business case for such speeds without radical restructuring and re-engineering.

It really is time for common sense and transparency from the mobile (and broadband) industry, starting with the engineers developing the standards and migrating to radio and network planning technicians and the PR men.

Hype, smoke, mirrors and 3G

The announcement by GSA in July that “a new baseline of 7.2 Mbps with HSPA had been established for mobile broadband in the majority of commercial networks worldwide” has yet again raised the spectacle of an industry hyping it’s capabilities. Now the GSA says that “the next baseline for mobile broadband peak downlink data speed will be 21 Mbps HSPA”.

I have no doubt that 100 plus networks world wide have implemented support for 7.2 Mbps, but I have yet to achieve anything like that in any of the networks I have tried around the world.

Lets get real, a couple of cells in a network, optimised to support higher speeds does not constitue a commercial service, if networks could truly offer the claimed speeds, especially with unlimited download volumes, we would witness network collapse each and every day, they are not engineered to support the claim.

WiMax is no different, the dismal performance of some of the current commercial networks hides the success of those who have built credible business models and engineered quality networks. The LTE camp fights the WiMax camp, claiming a better technology, from a radio perspective, there is very little difference, but there is a lot of hype.

3G networks are crawling with self induced interference and as a result are incapable of supporting the current speeds or capacity claimed. Why then should we believe that they will meet the even tighter technical or commercial requirements imposed by LTE ?

Operators seem unwilling to fix the problem, they have neither the finances, resources nor the skills necessary. But the solutions are there, as the successful WiMax operators have shown. The way forward lies in the hands of two groups of people:

• the share holders of the networks asking the question of their company directors, “what is the network capable of, and why does it not live up to the hype” ?
• the regulators revoking licenses and refusing to re-farm spectrum until operators deliver on their hype

Spectrum is an asset belonging to the citizens of each nation, operators have been given access to tranches of this asset to provide telephony and broadband but have not delivered. Broadband is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity to businesses and individuals. Regulators and holders of spectrum should begin to deliver to expectation and hype before raising smoke and mirrors yet again.